Absence/Presence: 30 Years of Day Without Art

By: Atkins, Robert

Commemorating Visual AIDS' three-decades-strong initiative to mobilize art institutions toward political acts of resistance

Published with NAME] PUBLICATIONS.

This landmark volume resurfaces the history of Day Without Art, a day of action and mourning in response to the ongoing AIDS crisis, organized by Visual AIDS and observed by thousands of museums, universities and galleries since 1989. Conceived amid the culture wars of the late 1980s, Day Without Art marked a decisive shift in how art institutions understood their social and political responsibilities, calling on them to confront the AIDS crisis publicly. What began as a call for institutions to close or remove artworks--using absence to give presence to the losses of the AIDS crisis--quickly evolved into a networked platform for socially engaged art, ranging from posters and stickers to net art, public projections and national television broadcasts.
Spanning more than 300 pages, this publication brings together a chorus of critical essays, firsthand reflections and previously unpublished archival material documenting three decades of Visual AIDS' artistic commissions and institutional collaborations. Together, these contributions offer long-overdue recognition of the labor and political negotiation behind the program, demonstrating the significance of Day Without Art within histories of institutional critique and social practice.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GZ7G9QVT
• ISBN13: 9798988981749
• Release Date: June 2026
• Publisher: Visual Aids, New York
• Length: 304 Pages